> The whole point of the pristine tree is to give yourself a tree into > which you can import Linus patches. If you start putting extra stuff> in there you will get patch rejects.

or in the opposite direction : your changesets sent to linus have to bepatches against the pristine tree, not against your-working-tree-with-several-patches-that-linus-doesn't-have.

(tying your response to Ingo into this one :)

it makes sense : any submitted patches should be against a known-cleanstate, which means that the 'linear' element that people complain aboutis actually bk enforcing some rather logical development practices.